Killing Trade

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“Hospital food,” Burnett said as Bolan shot him a quizzical look. “You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

Bolan took in the tableau before him. On the floor near the bed, a tray and a broken plate were overturned in a puddle of soup. The wall and floor were sprayed with blood. Burnett had hit the artery. Near the corpse was a syringe, still loaded with an unknown liquid.

“What tipped you off?” Bolan asked, checking the corridor with a backward glance.

“The boots,” Burnett said. “That, and the fact that he was too polite. They don’t waste any time on bedside manner around here. He brought my dinner and then fumbled the needle. I didn’t give him another chance to stick me.”

“How’s the eye?” Bolan asked.

“Going to be okay.” Burnett gestured to his right eye, which was covered by a circular bandage and some gauze. “I won’t be using it for several days, though. The brick fragments scratched the cornea.” Burnett’s other eye was very red but apparently not injured as badly. The detective paused to snap open the cylinder of his .38, extract the spent round by hand and load a replacement from a speed strip on the bed next to him. “I’m going to stop keeping my gun under my pillow and start sleeping with it on me.”

“You’d better get dressed,” Bolan warned. “There may be more of them waiting to see if this one makes it out of the hospital to report.” He bent over the corpse and took a shot with his phone camera. He’d transmit it to the Farm later. His guess was that little useful information would be turned up. NLI and Blackjack seemed to have deep pockets when it came to personnel—personnel with plausible deniability, at that.

“I have a car in the parking garage below the hospital,” Burnett told him as they left the room and made for the stairs. Burnett had tried first to head for the elevators, but Bolan had stopped him. There was no need to trap themselves; Blackjack’s operatives, assuming that’s who they were, had no need of gift-wrapped targets. They were dangerous enough operating on an even playing field.

They made the garage without incident and took Burnett’s Crown Victoria to the detention center. There, they were stopped in the screening area, where a uniformed officer checked Burnett’s revolver and the Glock he’d retrieved from a lockbox in the trunk of his unmarked car. Bolan flashed the Justice credentials Brognola had provided him.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cooper,” the blond officer told him, gesturing to the tray connecting the foyer of the screening room to her booth, “but you’re going to have to check your weapons. Firearms are not permitted past this point.” Bolan hesitated. There were plenty of times he had relinquished his weapons when the need arose, but given the bold and ruthless tactics Blackjack had employed to this point, he didn’t think it wise to give up his guns.

Burnett sensed the soldier’s hesitation, though Bolan didn’t know just how much hardware the detective realized Bolan was carrying. “Listen,” he told the Executioner, his uncovered eye blinking rapidly as he squinted in the bright lighting of the foyer, “let me go in and speak to Ruiz. Maybe I can get something. Maybe I won’t. You said yourself on the way here you didn’t think he’d cooperate. Hang out for a bit and if I think you can get more, or if I need help, I’ll call for you.”

Bolan nodded. He’d seen the cop work and knew he was no amateur. It was a reasonable proposition. “You feel up to it?” he asked.

“I don’t need both eyes to talk to this joker.” Burnett smiled. “Though I think I’ll keep my fingers away from his mouth. He’s got a real rabid dog look to him.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Burnett said. He waited while the young female officer buzzed him through, stepped through the security doors and disappeared down the hallway.

Waiting in the foyer, Bolan took a seat on one of the benches provided, his duster spilling over it and concealing the Ultimax and his other gear. His messenger bag thumped heavily on the wooden bench, but there was no one to notice. Except for the officer in her booth, Bolan was alone, save perhaps for the surveillance cameras that would be monitoring anyone sitting in the little room.

The soldier took a moment to key on his secure phone and transmit the photo of the hospital killer. Almost immediately, the phone began to vibrate with an incoming call.

“Cooper,” he said, holding the phone to his ear.

“It’s me,” Barbara Price said.

The Executioner could picture the Farm’s stunning mission controller seated at her desk. “What have you got?” he asked.

“Akira’s turned up a lead on that hard drive,” Price told him. “He’s still working on it to see what else we can mine. Indications are that there’s a lot of data someone tried to delete. That would be easy to recover if not for the damage to the drive itself.”

“I figured,” Bolan said, nodding, even though she could not see him.

“What we’ve got may help, though. Akira turned up a fragment of a spreadsheet program that includes payments made through a private mailbox at one of those shipping storefronts. We traced the shipper’s records—Bear tells me their security wasn’t terribly impressive—and the box is owned by a nonexistent limited liability corporation registered out of state. Some more digging turned up an address for the corporation, tied to yet another drop box, tied in turn to an address in Swedesboro, New Jersey.”

“That’s pretty thin,” Bolan commented.

“It’s all we’ve got so far,” Price said.

“Send me the file. I’ll visit as time allows. How far is Swedesboro from here?”

“You should be able to make it in a couple of hours, give or take. Why don’t you let us send a team of blacksuits to check it? It will save you time.”

“All right,” Bolan said. He paused. “You gave my message to Hal?”

“Yes, and he’s still buried, doing damage control. What the hell is going on there, Striker?”

“Things have gotten hotter than even I thought they would,” Bolan said. “I came expecting drug gangs and I’ve spent most of my time fighting trained paramilitary troops. They don’t care who gets in the way and they’re highly motivated to stay out of our hands. They’re audacious, ruthless and armed with the DU ammunition.”

“We’re untangling the bulletins and the complaints on this end, routing through and back to Hal’s office,” Price informed him. “Striker, if it gets much worse the governor’s going to call out the National Guard. The mayor is burning up the phone lines between New York and Washington. Hal even got a phone call from the vice president about half an hour ago.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Bolan said grimly. “I’m not going to have much fighting room left. What about Justice intervention?”

“Hal is working the NLI front,” Price said, “but they’re stonewalling. Blackjack’s reps won’t speak with anyone. They’ve pulled up the drawbridges. Unless we can get some leverage on them, there’s little to be done.”

“I’ll deal with them in turn, then,” Bolan promised.

“Good hunting, Striker.”

“Thanks, Barb.” Bolan hung up.

As he secured his phone in a pocket of his blacksuit under his duster, three men entered the detention-center foyer. One, a slight man with thinning hair and round-framed spectacles, wearing a three-piece suit and carrying a briefcase, was obviously a lawyer. The second was a thickset Hispanic man wearing wraparound shades and a sport jacket that didn’t hide the bulge of the gun under his left arm. He was obviously hired muscle, probably a bodyguard. Between the lawyer and the larger man was someone Bolan recognized from the intelligence files the Farm had transmitted.